Hi,I am still learning how to take care of a performance rig and I have set every thing up as NIck N suggest. I have 3 hard drives, acrois image, and disk director.The first drive has the os and another partion that has just bs stuff like pics and crap from the wife. the second is a 10k rpm raptor with only fsx and addons. the third is a clone of the first drive. Usually every couple months or when I make a signifigant change I back it all up by cloning the drive. I then defrag the cloned drive with o&o. As for the primary drive when I defrag that I open the case and swap for the cloned drive so that I can defrag when nothing is running. Is there any benefit to this? if so do I have to open the case and swap them. I have tried booting from the cloned drive by usb and selecting it in the bios and it does boot BUT I think it is only using the boot sector because when windows starts it is actually still the first drive that is running. I hope this makes sense to someone. The next question, is there a way that I can back up to the cloned drive only recent changes instead of cloning each time?Thanks very muchEric

O&O has a defrag mode where it will defrag your drive before the OS loads specifically so it can defrag "while nothing is running" (except O&O defrag :-) Check Settings/Offline Defragmentation. I have the Professional version, and I don't know if this feature is availaboe in the standard version.The other question is you are looking for incremental backup. Most every backup software implements incremental backups, but then again a backup is not the same as cloning. (Me I also prefere cloning, and am also looking for an incremental clone solution, for example "copy all files over but only if source date is larger than target file date in case target file already exists".)Cheers,- jahman.

I feel safe cloning, at least i know its there and it works. I have the pro o&o. I was under the impression that offline defrag was for pagefile only. I take from your reply that it dioes the entire disk. so is it the same as a name defrag?we both use o&o, do you have any idea what exactly the space option is for? I use it just because it was an evolution in the set up guide. EricI feel safe cloning, at least i know its there and it works. I have the pro o&o. I was under the impression that offline defrag was for pagefile only. I take from your reply that it dioes the entire disk. so is it the same as a name defrag?we both use o&o, do you have any idea what exactly the space option is for? I use it just because it was an evolution in the set up guide. Eric

Off-Line defrag will defrag all the files that are locked exclusive by the OS at run-time, so that if you defrag "off-line" and then again "on-line" after the OS loads, your disk will be 100% defragged.The "space" option tells the defragger to maximize free space available in each zone.Cheers,- jahman.